The MOK 8F is progressing albeit slowly. I have been working on the replacement JLRT tender which is coming together.

The welded tender rear plate needed rivets punching out and I had to make another anvil to make sure that the spacing was correct. Sadly I made a complete hash of punching them out, only getting one set out of 6 where they should sit.

After much muttering I made the decision to flatten the punched rivets and file off the reamng stubs. Then I riveted a piece of thin brass along one edge with blocks of three rivets at the correct spacing. Between those I left a space so that I cold cut them to fit. I fitted the JLRT steps first, then soldered on the riveted plates above them to compete the illusion.

The casting for the water gauge supplied by JLRT was whitemetal and seemed very big so I machined another one based on the one supplied with the MOK tender

I still need to solder it in place but it looks the part.

I also started to add details to the tender front, I couldn’t resist trying to make the locking latch work by filing down a brass dressmakers pin to act as the pivot.